Only last week, an official on duty at Victoria Hospital’s trauma care centre found a patient calling his family members on the sly and asking them not to visit him at the time of his discharge.Sreemoyee Chatterjee | TNN | July 29, 2017, 13:46 IST

Representational imageBENGALURU: Only last week, an official on duty at Victoria Hospital’s trauma care centre found a patient calling his family members on the sly and asking them not to visit him at the time of his discharge. Reason: if he could fake he was a destitute, he could leave the hospital without paying the ICU charges. And that is exactly what he did.

A few days earlier, family members of a patient who was brought to KC General Hospital vanished the minute he was stretchered into the ICU. When doctors returned to discuss the patient’s condition with his family members, they couldn’t trace any of them; they filed a complaint at Malleswaram police station.

Shockingly, police too couldn’t trace the family, leaving the hospital with no choice but to treat and discharge the patient for free as they would do for any other destitute.

At least three patients every week, on an average, undergoing treatment at emergency and ICU at Victoria Hospital’s trauma care centre pretend to be destitutes to escape paying hospital charges, say doctors in charge of the centre.

Dr Balaji Pai, special officer in-charge at trauma care centre, Victoria Hospital, said: “Patients pretending to be destitutes to escape hospital bills are common at government hospitals. We come across several instances where a patient stays for days in our ICU for treatment and, at the time of discharge, fakes to be a destitute so that we don’t charge him.”

Doctors say most of these patients aren’t very poor and can bear the daily bed charges of Rs 30 in emergency and Rs 1,500 in ICU.

Dr H Ravikumar, medical superintendent at KC General Hospital, Malleswaram, said: “It’s sad that not always such patients faking to be destitutes are actually poor. Just a month-and-half ago we had two such incidents, where the patients’ attendants disappeared soon after admitting them at the emergency.”

“As we don’t ask for advance payments when a patient is brought to emergency, the attendants make use of the situation to escape and don’t return till the patient is discharged as a destitute. This they do to escape paying hospital bills. While we file police complaints, even cops can’t trace the family members on such occasions,” he added.

A top official from the state health department said such incidents are common at government hospitals, especially primary healthcare centres. “The main reason behind such an attitude among patients is poverty. However, we have come across cases where the patient’s family members couldn’t show us a BPL card at the time of admission. Later, they’d disappear to escape paying bills,” said the official.

“If the state government provides universal health insurance coverage to all patients visiting government hospitals for treatment, such situations can be avoided. However, we never make any judgement and do not deny treatment to even those who pretend to be destitutes,” the official added.

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